The Supreme Court reversed the New Haven case of the white and latino firefighters who were denied promotion because no black applicants scored well enough on the test. Here are the important points:
Constitutional due process was denied the firefighters, who were summarily denied promotion. There were no processes for redress, or any way for any individual firefighter to establish exactly what he or she may have done wrong.
See, even activist judges cant come out and say, its because we think it helps or hurts some group. Because the law still is written that “groups” are not the issue. Individuals still have to prove they have been wronged.
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While federal law does state that there is the presumption of discrimination, it is in the process of the procedure, not the impact, wherein the discrimination must lie. The law was never intended to read that if a perfectly good test produces unwanted results, its an automatic throwout or do over.
Herein lies the dramatic failure of Sotomayor and the honest questioning of her judgement.
The District Judge who sided with New Haven in throwing out the results affirmed that they had the right to do so, even if they couldnt explain why. This was a clear violation of the intent of the law and a case where the impact upon a “group” was given carte blanche veto power over the rights of individuals.
All Sotomayor did was to reduce the rights and privileges of the individual by upholding that travesty of justice and ignoring blatant discrimination against firefighters simply because of the color of their skin.
Today, she received her last, and hopefully final, letter of reprimand for her actions.
Seems she’d fit right in replacing Souter as he too voted in favor of New Haven.